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Filmmaker Nicole Holofcener recently received a Academy-Award nomination for adapted screenplay and won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the film "Can You Ever Forgive Me?." We'll revisit our conversation with Nicole – when she stopped by we talked about another one of her recent projects, "The Land of Steady Habits." She'll also discuss her childhood growing up among Hollywood filmmaking royalty. Show notes

Science

This week's episode was recorded LIVE IN SEATTLE! There's the case, "May It Placebo the Court," Swift Justice cases about making new friends, having tiles shipped to a friend's house, and smart lights. Plus music from Shabazz Palaces!

Please note, the music segment of the show contains some strong language.

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Thank you to Sasha Zucker for naming this week's case! To suggest a title for a future episode, like Judge John Hodgman on Facebook. We regularly put out a call for submissions.

Jordan Morris is a podcasting savant. For years he has endeared himself to listeners as one of the hosts of the Max Fun podcast Jordan, Jesse Go!. But these days, he’s getting more attention for the sci-fi/comedy show Bubble, which wrapped up its initial season (spoiler alert: he’s going to tease the future of the series in this episode).

In our last episode, we spoke with flat earther Jeran Campanella about what, in his view, was wrong with the Salton Sea earth-shape test, and how it could be better performed in the future. A week later, Ross, two friends, and seven flat earthers return to the Salton Sea to attempt a second test, hoping to eliminate some of the perceived problems with the first. Everyone goes home happy, having honestly confronted the gaps in their knowledge and challenges of investigative work; and Earth's shape is confirmed to everyone's satisfaction. (Just kidding!)

Ross and Carrie take a break from their out of body adventures to bring you this interview with prominent Flat Earth proponent Jeran Campanella. He takes a different tack than much of that community and sparks a distinct conversation from our interview with Mark Sargent. Join us in an exploration of religion, the nature of science, rice experiments, intercontinental flights, and the Salton Sea test.

We've seen it time and time again. A journal publishes a seemingly significant scientific study which gains traction in the press only to be subsequently deemed irreproducible. This pattern is known as the reproducibility crisis, and our guest, University of Virginia Professor Brian Nosek, is trying to awaken the scientific community and the public at large to these challenges. Brian says the reproducibility crisis is not a new problem. Because scientists' career advancement is contingent on publication, the community is incentivized to create studies that tell a positive, novel and tidy story, known as publication bias, and leave findings out of publications that don't advance their conclusions.

In response, Brian, who appeared on Adam Ruins Science, founded the Reproducibility Project, which tried to replicate the results of 100 psychological experiments published in respected journals in 2008. In 2015, their results were published in Science and found that only 36 out of the 100 replications showed statistically significant results, compared with 97 of the 100 original experiments.

Some of this sounds discouraging and might make us doubt science. But the reality is that research is difficult and lab results are often messy and many times don't fit into neat categories. Brian argues that's actually the beauty of science and we should look at this issue as less of a crisis and more as an opportunity. When we realize we're wrong about our ideas about the world, it forces us to realign our worldview and think about our surroundings from a different perspective. Being wrong only gets us closer to being right!

If it weren't for the Innocence Project's Chris Fabricant, we might not even have an Adam Ruins Everything Podcast! After he and Adam met of the set of Adam Ruins Forensic Science, Adam found his work so fascinating that he felt he had to talk to Chris in a longer format, and thus the original idea for the podcast was born.

As the Innocence Project's Director of Strategic Litigation, Chris develops and executes strategies to address the leading causes of wrongful conviction, including eyewitness misidentification, the misapplication of forensic sciences and false confessions. His cases take him all across the country to help exonerate the wrongfully accused.

You've heard the phrase plenty of times in your life: "Drink more water!" But our guest on this week's podcast dispels that myth.

Professor Tamara Hew-Butler, who appears on the Adam Ruins Football episode of the TV show, studies how too much water while exercising can actually be dangerous. Her research at Oakland University specifically focuses on excess water and hyponatremia, a potentially fatal condition when your body holds too much water.

Adam and Tamara discuss the myth of drinking eight glasses of water a day, Adam's lessons from his very long, first marathon, and Tamara's hilariously unorthodox lab experiments.

Science journalist John Bohannon, who appeared on the nutrition episode of Adam Ruins Everything, joins us on this week's podcast!

John is fascinating - he's a contributing correspondent for Science magazine and has a Ph.D. in molecular biology from Oxford University. His experience in both academia and journalism has led to an inventive approach to exposing the flaws of science journalism and specifically nutrition journalism.

On the episode, John and Adam discuss John's fake chocolate study, his latest expose on Sci-Hub, and much more.

Though she didn’t earn a degree in the sciences, author Mary Roach has a knack for writing about them with insight and wit. Whether she’s describing what happens to the body after death or the many aspects of human sexuality, Roach makes her topics accessible and fun.

Roach has authored half a dozen books including: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife and Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, as well as articles for magazines including Vogue, GQ, and National Geographic.

Mary Roach sat down with Jesse about whether shark repellant actually exists, life on submarines and how leaches inspired her to write a book on military science.

William Bell on the Family at Staxx Records, His Career Before and After Being Drafted and His Voice, Then and Now

William Bell is a soul singer and songwriter whose distinctive sound is forever associated with the legendary Stax Records. Along with with performers like Otis Redding, Sam and Duke, Isaac Hayes and the Staple Singers, Bell helped create music that continues to entertain and inspire.

He is famous for his hit songs including You Don’t Miss Your Water, Private Number, A Tribute to the King and Everybody Loves a Winner. He also co-wrote the classic song, Born Under a Bad Sign which was originally performed by Albert King and later covered by Jimi Hendrix, Etta James, Cream and even Homer Simpson.

William Bell joined Jesse to talk about what it was like beginning his musical career while still a teenager, how he returned to his career after being drafted and what he thinks about his own voice, now that he is in his seventies.